Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Criticism

All major writers of the Enlightenment enjoyed royal or aristocratic patronage, often denying their financial dependency and claiming to live by the labours of their pens or by the expanding readership of the eighteenth century, thereby maintaining the ideal of intellectual autonomy.

In Patrons of Enlightenment, Edward G. Andrew examines the conditions in which the central idea of Enlightenment was fabricated; intellectual autonomy was constructed while patronage was being transformed by a commercial print culture. Andrew further argues that since an Enlightenment depends on a...

In Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls, Ruth Abbey collects eight essays responding to the work of John Rawls from a feminist perspective. An impressive introduction by the editor provides a chronological overview of English-language feminist engagements with Rawls from his Theory of Justice onward. Abbey surveys the range of issues canvassed by feminist readers of Rawls, as well as critics' wide disagreement about the value of Rawls's corpus for feminist purposes. The eight essays that follow testify to the continuing ambivalence among feminist readers of Rawls. From...

• Pairs 50 classical and contemporary readings with popular films - from Monty Python and The Matrix to Casablanca and A Clockwork Orange
• Addresses key areas in philosophy, including topics in ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, free will and determinism, the problem of perception,...

In the chapters discussed in this section of Philoponus' Physics commentary, Aristotle explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true. Philoponus' commentaries do not merely report and explain Aristotle and the other thinkers whom Aristotle is discussing. They are also the philosophical work of an independent thinker in the Neoplatonic tradition. Philoponus has his...

A careful analysis of the rhetorical thought of Rene Descartes and of a distinguished group of post-Cartesians. Covering a unique range of authors, including Bernard Lamy and Nicolas Malebranche, Carr attacks the idea, which has become commonplace in contemporary criticism, that the Cartesian system is incompatible with rhetoric.

Carr analyzes the writings of Balzac, the Port-Royalists Arnauld and Nicole, Malebranche, and Lamy, exploring the evolution of Descartes thought into their different theories of rhetoric. He constructs his arguments, probing each author s writings on rhetoric,...

This book proposes to rethink the relationship between philosophy and literature through an engagement with Plato's dialogues. The dialogues have been seen as the source of a long tradition that subordinates poetry to philosophy, but they may also be approached as a medium for understanding how to overcome this opposition. Paradoxically, Plato then becomes an ally in the attempt "to overturn Platonism," which Gilles Deleuze famously defined as the task of modern philosophy. Max Statkiewicz identifies a "rhapsodic mode" initiated by Plato in the dialogues and pursued by many of his modern...

Hegel makes philosophical proposals concerning religion and Christianity that demand critical reflection from contemporary theology.

Hegel and Theology discusses the role that an understanding of religion and Christianity play in the development of Hegel's idea of philosophy; Hegel's treatment of religious experience; the problem of the relation between the world and God and the issue of God's transcendence. These discussions provide a framework for considering Hegel's understandings of specific Christian mysteries. De Nys here considers the Hegelian conception of the Trinity, and...

The Signature of All Things is Giorgio Agamben's sustained reflection on method. To reflect on method implies for Agamben an archaeological vigilance: a persistent form of thinking in order to expose, examine, and elaborate what is obscure, unanalyzed, even unsaid, in an author's thought. To be archaeologically vigilant, then, is to return to, even invent, a method attuned to a -world supported by a thick weave of resemblances and sympathies, analogies and correspondences.- Collecting a wide range of authors and topics in a slim but richly argued volume, Agamben enacts the search to create...

Taking Wittgenstein at His Word is an experiment in reading organized around a central question: What kind of interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy emerges if we adhere strictly to his claims that he is not in the business of presenting and defending philosophical theses and that his only aim is to expose persistent conceptual misunderstandings that lead to deep philosophical perplexities? Robert Fogelin draws out the therapeutic aspects of Wittgenstein's later work by closely examining his account of rule-following and how he applies the idea in the philosophy of...